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# 141
A Positive Concept of Barbarism: Benjamin and the Consequences
Sami Khatib
Benjamin’s concept of experience, Erfahrung, remains speculative in the best non-positivist sense of the word. Its speculative ground, however, exceeds the speculations of theory. But what is left for the materialist intellectual who is to theorize the political, economic, social, and aesthetic conditions of poverty, deprivation, and precarity in the age of “very-late” capitalism? Eventually, Benjamin’s materialist argument comes down to a simple insight: the combination of poor experience and rich thought is poor in social consequences. Instead of gradually enriching thought through inclusive multidirectionality, radical thought must insert reductive shortcuts, one-sided interruptions.
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 12, 2023
Category
Ideology, Marxism , Fascism, Aesthetics
Subjects
Materialism, Germany